Most of the country spent last night below freezing – and in Minneapolis we may not have set a record for cold when we bottomed out at -23F this morning but we wanted to let you know that we survived the worst freeze we’ve had in a decade by giving you the opportunity to take 23% off your next order!

If all you’re looking for is a simple 4×6 from one of our athletic events in the last two years you can get free USPS shipping with the code! The best part: there is no limit to the number of times you, or anyone else, can use the code! Between today and January 15 enter “COLDSAVINGS” at check out and get 23% off all orders – Digital Downloads or Reprints.

Please do not hesitate to let us know if you have any questions about the process or if the game you are looking for is not on our Photo Shelter page – we will do our best to get them uploaded as quickly as possible.

And, as an added incentive, if we get 100 orders in the next eight days we will extend the offer through the end of January AND pick one lucky individual from the orders in January to get a $100 gift certificate off any order in the future.
And if we get 200 orders between now and January 31 everyone will receive a $5 coupon code they can use at any time in the future – or share with a friend.

Thanks to you we had an incredibly successful 2013 and we want to share that success with you.

From the entire family at d3photography.com I thank you for your patronage.

We’ve been here and there for the last year, and our main photographers have been off doing other fun things for the last year but we’ve returned.

And it’s been well over a year since we last blogged. We’re sorry. We will work on that, I promise.

But here’s the reason I’m here today: We want to grow our network. We’re looking for skilled, experienced photographers who want to increase the traffic their galleries get and be able to have their work shown on the largest Division III sports network in the country: D3sports.com. We also have limited agreements with CollegeHockeyNews.com (Div I Men’s) and USCHO.com (Div I Women’s).

We are looking for two types of photographers:

Photographers that cover specific schools/sports

Photographers that will cover anything in their region

For the first time in our 10 years of covering athletic events we’ve moved our resale off our servers and over to Photo Shelter where we have a 1TB storage limit to accommodate fulfillment and distribution but we have also changed our main photo website to link to other people’s websites. If you have a distribution site of your own that you’d like us to link to all you need to do is send us your game proofs.
We have a few expectations:

Submit news photos to our media partners in a timely manner (within a few hours of the completion of your event) for possible inclusion to their website. Each partner site has different requirements for image sizes and we will provide that to you.

Upload your proof images to our FTP server so we can put them into the large catalog. Right now we have over 600,000 photos from the last nine seasons available for our media partners to utilize in their stories.

If we are linking to you we want proof images 2000 pixels wide/tall

If we are distributing your work for you proofs should be 1500 pixels wide/tall

If we are doing your distribution you will receive a second FTP account to upload directly to Photo Shelter.

We have one other requirement: File names and folder names should be in the following format: YYMMDD-HOME-AWAY[-team] with the file name having a 3- or 4-digit numerical extension. We highly recommend that you also utilize the IPTC data storage on your images with captions, keywords, contact and credit information. If we are handling your distribution we will supply you with a base file to work with where you can change your game-related information as needed.

We are a Photo Mechanic shop and can provide assistance with that and BreezeBrowser Pro in addition to using FileZilla for handling all FTP needs.

So… Now that we have that out of the way we’ve recently added Sabbyshots.com and OhioSI.com to our distribution network and picked up Eric Kelley from north central Indiana but we are always looking for more of you. We’ll work with you to get the kinks worked out (and you can even upload your library from this school year in all sports). We don’t have needs for all sports but we welcome any events you want to cover (Volleyball, Tennis, Cross Country, Wrestling, Lacrosse, etc.). We will run your credit as you wish to have it printed (within reason) and we will also go to bat on your behalf over any copyright infringement. All we will do is take 40% of your sales after costs are factored in to cover our expenses and time and we will even pay you via PayPal for large orders within 48 hours and the rest at the close of each quarter.

Markets we have covered a bit at the moment:

Minneapolis/Saint Paul

Los Angeles

South Bend/North Central Indiana

Central Michigan

But we want to grow. We want to have to spend more time than we have on the weekends and week nights processing your photos than we can afford to – but this is to make us all happy, right?

If you’re a novice photographer we do ask that you let us know in advance. We will help you in whatever manner we can with the rules, expectations, requirements while at the event and even get you in touch with the SIDs that you need to speak with to gain access to the site(s).

We would like to expand into the following regions as quickly as possible:

Chicago

Seattle

Philadelphia

Pittsburgh

Washington, DC

New York City

Upstate NY

Texas — all regions

Western Massachusetts

Boston

Ohio

Southwestern Virginia (Roanoke/Bridgewater and possibly Greensboro)

Any city with a Division I hockey program

We’re also looking for Basketball and Baseball photographers

Our network of experienced photographers have covered hockey, lacrosse, baseball, basketball, football (pro and college), basketball, soccer, tennis, cross-country, wrestling, swimming and diving, softball and track and field – just to name a few – and can help you get started covering an event. We’ve shot in many venues but a lot of schools have put time and money into improving their venues for the fans and the media over the past few years so what we remember the venues as may not longer be the case.

If I haven’t scared you away already please feel free to send us an email to newshooter@d3photography.com. Be sure you include your name, region, schools you know in the area, sports you’ve covered, the gear you own (this will give us an idea of what types of sports and venues you can work in), a link to your work and an idea of the experience you have in the field.

Please, we ask that player parents not contact us unless you have an interest in covering other sports. Also our needs on game day are relatively limited: We like uncropped, untouched photos as proofs ASAP. Sharpening is OK by us – as long as the image isn’t over sharpened) and you can do touch-up work in post-production. Our staff photographers submit their work within a few hours of the completion of the game and do their color correction work on the final product. If you must crop please be considerate of the end user’s possible interests in getting prints. They should be 4×6 in format and leave a fair amount of space for their wants. We tend to not do any cropping to our work and hope you feel that same way.

Concordia-Moorhead celebrates their victory over Carleton in PKs in the MIAC Women's Soccer Championship game. Photo by Katrina Styx, d3photography.com

Tonight marks the start of the NCAA Division III soccer playoffs. and the first game kicks off with a men’s match at 5 pm Eastern tonight between Transylvania and Lynchburg, and a women’s match at 8 pm ET (5pm Pacific) between Redlands and Chapman.

We’ll have our best soccer playoff coverage to date with six photographers confirmed for matches around the country:

Joe Bergman is covering the SCIAC tournament, starting with the Redlands/Chapman tilt tonight and the winner at Cal Lutheran on Saturday

Jeffrey Levy will be at the TCNJ regional

Daryl Tessmann will be at the UW-Whitewater regional on Saturday

Larry Radloff will be at the UW-Oshkosh regional

Scott Pierson will be covering the Macalester regional victors on Saturday

I will be at UW-Whitewater for the match between the Saturday victors.

We’ll also have some football covered this weekend with Matt Milless at the CORTACA game (Cortland State vs. Ithaca), Joe will be at the Occidental / Cal Lutheran game on Saturday, too, and I will be at the Monon Bell rivalry game between Wabash College and DePauw University – the 117th matchup between these two teams in the oldest football rivalry game in the Midwest.

Basketball, around the corner

Basketball season is right around the corner. November 15 is the earliest day the NCAA allows Division III teams to schedule a regular season game (they can play up to two scrimmages prior – often against teams from other divisions). This will make the number of sports we have coverage for in a news environment to twelve.

Men’s Basketball

Women’s Basketball

Men’s Soccer*

Women’s Soccer*

Football*

Div I Men’s Ice Hockey

Div I Women’s Ice Hockey

Div III Men’s Ice Hockey

Div III Women’s Ice Hockey

Wrestling

Men’s Swimming & Diving

Women’s Swimming & Diving

* denotes fall sports in playoffs

Wow, that’s a lot. And the baseball season starts in February. We will be working the Division III Men’s Frozen Four at Ridder Arena in Minneapolis for USCHO, the Division I Men’s Frozen Four at the XCel Energy Center in April for CollegeHockeyNews.com, the early rounds of the Div III men’s and women’s basketball playoffs for D3hoops.com, the Stagg Bowl for D3football.com and the men’s and women’s soccer championships for D3soccer.com in December. A busy few months ahead for us, including the MIAC Swimming and Diving Championship and a few other conference meets that we’re going to try and finalize the next few months.

Well, not really, but we’re really busy. And another blog to come covering rivalry games and the interest things seen on the sidelines and in the games, the drama that makes them all the more fun (some coverage in this week’s D3football Around the Nation podcast).

As we enter Week 3 Our photographers are turning in their beach towels for jackets. With the leaves starting to turn and the chill in the air it is clear that summer is coming to a close and the fall has arrived. The d3photography staff will be out and about this weekend stopping the action of the best in Division III athletics. Check back often for the latest galleries as they will be updated throughout the weekend.

We have a few games in so far but will be posting the photos from our shooters tomorrow afternoon. Check back then.